Telstra said it finished migrating South Brisbane copper services to fibre ahead of schedule. The telco moved 18,000 services to fibre, covering 13,000 homes and businesses in the area, it said.

Phone, copper Internet and cable broadband have been upgraded to fibre under the project. Telstra said the fibre network is the largest optical distribution network the telco has designed and built. Telstra laid 284 kilometres of cable, 26.4 km of new conduit and replaced or upgraded 1661 pits, it said.

South Brisbane was selected for the upgrade because an old Telstra exchange had to be closed to make way for a children's hospital.

Telstra plans to hand over the site to the Queensland government in June, it said. Over the next five months, Telstra said it will decommission the exchange and related infrastructure, including the reworked underground conduit network, recovery of copper cables and recycling of scrap materials.

"For anyone located in the South Brisbane exchange area it will be business as usual from now on as connections, disconnections and faults on the new network will be managed directly with their telecommunications service provider," Telstra said.

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